Idle home computers may unlock mysteries

Researchers tap into power well to speed studies

NEW YORK (AP) Don't hit that power button! By leaving your computer running, you can join the search for aliens or help fight AIDS.

Researchers are increasingly turning to a technique called distributed computing to complete in days or weeks computing tasks that would normally take months or years.

By combining the idle processing power of thousands, even millions of personal computers on the Internet, they can form a virtual machine more powerful than even the world's fastest supercomputers.

Just this month, Stanford University launched Genome(at)Home to learn more about how genes work. Now that scientists have mapped the human genome, they'll need immense computing power to make sense of it.

''There's a huge amount of data in biology right now, and processing them is overwhelming,'' said Vijay Pande, a Stanford professor who runs Genome(at)Home and a separate project to learn how proteins form.

Kirk Pearson, a software developer who tracks distributed computing projects, said researchers are only beginning to grasp its possibilities. ''Once these (biotech projects) prove to be reliable, we'll see an explosion,'' he predicted.

Already, several companies have formed to explore commercial applications, including movie special effects and economic projections. Entropia Inc. and Parabon Computation Inc., among others, have developed software and set up networks of Internet users to rent for such projects.

Recognizing the revenue potential, Juno Online Services Inc. announced this month that it may require all users of its free Internet service to leave their computers on and run such tasks.

How well these projects succeed will depend on the companies' ability to overcome distrust from Internet users fearful of security and privacy breaches.

One thing is clear, though: The potential for distributed computing will only increase as computers get more powerful and more are connected to the Internet.

You only use a fraction of your computer's processing power when you surf the Web or compose a letter or e-mail. When you step away, you're using none of it. So why not donate your excess to science?

Distributed computing has been around for years, initially used primarily on clusters of machines running the Linux operating system at NASA and universities. It migrated to the Net in the late 90s for such math problems as finding the longest prime number and cracking encryption.

Now, researchers are using similar techniques to design storage vessels for nuclear waste and study evolution.

Medical researchers can test millions of drug combinations to fight AIDS or cancer, and learn how anomalies in protein formation cause diseases.

''It's wonderful that the common person can get involved,'' said Larry Rymal, who runs SETI on about 80 computers at a training center near Houston.

The concept has been adapted by such companies as Porivo Technologies Inc. and Envive Corp. to monitor network connections. Web sites can tap their networks of Internet users to test Web performance.

One day, companies may find a way to tap the extra storage space on computers' hard drives. Napster and other peer-to-peer file-sharing services represent only the beginning for distributed storage.

Still, some significant obstacles exist.

By distributing the work, researchers can lose control over their data. The SETI project has had to contend with a handful of attempts to falsify data.

And sometimes, nonprofit organizations have to enlist for-profit companies to set up their systems.

For a project to identify drugs that may disable mutant forms of the AIDS virus, The Scripps Research Institute tapped Entropia, whose network had identified the world's longest known prime number. Entropia requires FightAIDS(at)Home volunteers to also devote a small portion of their computers to commercial projects.

Art Olson, a Scripps biology professor who runs the FightAIDS(at)Home project, said setting up his own network wasn't practical.

By finding a commercial partner, he said, the project is able to get 1,000 times the computing power that Scripps has available in-house. The AIDS project, begun last fall, now links nearly 14,000 machines.

Some SETI users, drawn by its noncommercial nature, say they want to be careful about the projects to which they donate their spare processing time.

''A lot of people are actually prepared to spend time and share time, but not to make other people rich out of it,'' warned Manfred Woellner, 40, who runs a software company in North London.

Ray Bowler, 69, a retired computer programmer in Carlisle, Iowa, worries that if he were to give up control, ''an anti-abortion group might get hold of the programs and use it for analysis to support a project to which I am completely opposed.''

Some companies try to offer such incentives as cash or sweepstakes entries. Others, such as Entropia, hope potential volunteers will be drawn to the philanthropic side.

So far, most computer users, particularly newcomers, still think of the Net only in terms of e-mail and Web sites not the processing power sitting at their desks.

''It's relatively new technology,'' said Steven Armentrout, chief executive of Parabon, which recently announced its ''Compute Against Cancer'' project. ''Once upon a time, a browser was a novel word.''

But ultimately, he said, ''the Internet is about connecting resources. This is harnessing the innate power of this large network.''